Windows phone 7 Archive

"I'm gonna ask rock star Kostas... to come on. And Kostas has brought with him Windows Phone 7, which we launch this October." So sayeth Microsoft VP for Marketing Mich Mathews in introducing GM of Live Labs' Kostas Mallios, who was at the Cannes Lions advertising conference to show off the advertising capabilities of the upcoming smartphone platform. Of course, last we heard, the official company line on WP7's release was "holiday 2010," so this would definitely narrow the launch window quite a bit, as well as corroborates earlier Telstra roadmap leaks. Not an official statement, but Mathews would definitely be someone in the know here. Don't expect the folks in Redmond to go ahead and confirm -- they work on their own schedule, thank you very much -- but should someone 'fess up, can we also talk about that $150 Kinect price? Video after the break.

It's been a bit of a unicorn since making a quick appearance at MIX, but we just got the chance to go hands-on with Samsung's Omnia i8910-basedWindows Phone 7 prototype phone. Interestingly, we were told that this hardware will never be released to market -- it's just for testing purposes right now. That testing is going quite well, as far as we can see -- Microsoft's people are starting to carry WP7 devices as their personal phones now, and while the software is still quite buggy, the build we saw in action was noticeably faster than before. We were also told that the hardware in the pipeline -- particularly from Samsung -- is apparently quite spectacular, and that this particular device doesn't represent the launch set of devices. We'll have to see -- we actually thought this prototype was quite handsome in person, although it's a little thicker than you might expect. Hit up the gallery for some more pics!